Under fire for mass cancellation of flights, India's largest air-carrier IndiGo has started calling up pilots at rival airlines who can fly Airbus planes, dangling hefty bonuses and asking them to join, as it struggles to stabilize operations.
However, it may not be easy for IndiGo to persuade pilots at rival airlines to make the switch amid concerns the company's troubles are far over, as the government launched a probe into the fiasco and vowed action, industry executives and pilots said.
Moreover, the war for pilots is set to intensify, as the Tata Group-owned rival Air India has advertised a recruitment drive just when IndiGo is desperately looking to hire pilots.
“Pilots of Air India got calls over the last weekend from IndiGo, and some of these pilots were junior officers. On offer are hefty joining bonuses, but given the long notice periods and the turmoil within IndiGo, one is unsure how many will make the move,” said a senior aviation industry official aware of the calls to the Air India pilots.
IndiGo's scramble for pilots began after the airline, with more than 60% domestic aviation market share, cancelled approximately 4,000 flights in the first week of December, leaving thousands of passengers across major airport hubs stranded.
India's aviation industry is effectively a two-horse race, dominated by IndiGo, and a distant-second Air India that has about 27% market share. A struggling SpiceJet and an upstart Akasa Air are only minor players.
IndiGo has an ambitious hiring plan as it seeks to overcome pilot shortages, fuelled by the government's 2024 rules that seek to give pilots more time to rest and recover, ensuring flight safety. InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, which runs IndiGo, in its submissions to aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) last week said that it aims to recruit 158 pilots by 10 February and another 742 by December next year. Mint has reviewed IndiGo's submissions to the DGCA.
Industry executives, however, say that recruiting these 900 pilots will be a tall order.
“About 40 pilots resigned around September because of the rostering system. Some have joined international airlines, specially those in the Middle East. Now, if IndiGo brings in pilots from outside at a higher pay, it will widen the rift within the pilots who are working for the airline,” said a former IndiGo pilot.
As per the airline’s FY25 annual report, it had 5,456 pilots, including first officers and captains.
Pilot shortage linked to new duty-time rules
IndiGo is accused of failing to plan and hire adequate staff for the new flight duty time limitations (FDTL) norms, leading to a shortage of legally rested pilots and causing an unprecedented aviation chaos. The DGCA gave airlines months to prepare with a phased rollout of the new norms beginning July 2025, and scheduled the final phase for November.
Meanwhile, Air India, which will be one of the key poaching grounds for IndiGo, took out an advertisement on 8 December, stating that it is recruiting pilots for A320 and B737 fleet. Here ‘A’ and ‘B’ stand for Airbus and Boeing - two different kinds of aircraft that require specific training and the skillsets are not easily interchangeable.
Hence, the target pool for IndiGo, which has mostly Airbus planes, becomes smaller.
Air India previously said it is setting up a pilot training school in Amravati, Maharashtra, with an annual intake of 180 candidates. The school is expected to be operational next year. The airline will also install 10 Airbus simulators at its Gurugram facility, with two of them already operational. Another 11 simulators will be set up in partnership with Boeing, also at the Gurugram facility. The airline also has a tie-up with two pilot training schools in the US.
IndiGo has a separate cadet training program.
Queries sent to IndiGo, Air India, SpiceJet, and Akasa Air remained unanswered.
For Air India Group's low-cost carrier Air India Express, which predominantly has a Boeing fleet, the threat from IndiGo would be minimal. “Typically, an Airbus A320 family pilot cannot automatically fly Boeing aircraft in India (or anywhere) without specific training and certification for the aircraft type, as control systems of the two OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) are different,” said another pilot on the condition of anonymity.
Industry executives say that pilot cross-training from Boeing to Airbus is expensive due to the high cost of conversion training.
Even for the rest of the Air India fleet that has Airbus, the pilots are unlikely to make the switch in a hurry. “Air India pilots, whether they are former Vistara or not, have settled in and their pay scales are not very different from IndiGo,” said a senior official in a smaller airline that hired a bunch of IndiGo pilots last month.
A report by InCred Equities on 6 December said that an IndiGo pilot flew an average of 571 hours in FY24, versus 471 hours of the Tata-run Air India Group. The industry average is 453 hours (ex-IndiGo). The average pilot salary at the Air India Group was pegged at ₹64 lakh in FY24, slightly lower than ₹66 lakh per annum for IndiGo , as per the note by InCred Equities. The industry average, ex-IndiGo, is ₹62 lakh.
Pilots typically have a notice period of 6-9 months, and therefore, the vacancies cannot be filled up quickly. The senior airline official cited above pointed out that IndiGo can speed up promotions to fill up vacancies for captains. “Because of poaching wars in the aviation sector, airlines other than Air India and Indigo have become very particular about notice periods. In some cases, they have threatened lawsuits if pilots leave abruptly.”
Murlidhar Mohol, minister of state for civil aviation, told the Rajya Sabha on 8 December that Air India has 6,350 pilots, IndiGo has 5,085, Air India Express 1,592, Akasa Air 466, SpiceJet has 385, and Alliance Air has 111 pilots.
An Air India official told Mint that growth opportunities for a pilot at Air India are far better. “Pilots have a chance to upgrade to wide body flights for flying for both Boeing and Airbus. This is a much more lucrative proposition. Plus, there is lesser flying time making the overall proposition to stick to Air India more lucrative,” this official said.
Meanwhile, in a rare regulatory intervention, the DGCA has rolled back IndiGo’s expanded winter schedule, cutting 5% of the daily departures it had approved and handing those slots to rival airlines. In a Tuesday order, the DGCA asked IndiGo to revise its winter schedule and curtail the number of flights by 5%, including on high-frequency, high-demand routes. The airline has to submit its revised flight plans by 5 pm Wednesday.